


Open Your Eyes And See- You'll See

by catherinelynnelove



Series: Come Fly With Me, Into A Fantasy [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26185090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherinelynnelove/pseuds/catherinelynnelove
Summary: Lance has always been the disappointment of Altea, because Altea is full of dragon killers, and as his sister says:Lance is many things, but a dragon killer isnotone of them.Then Lance actually manages to shoot down a dragon- and not justanydragon, but the deadliest, most elusive dragon known to Altea! Lance is so sure that he's finally found hismoment, hissalvation, hisroad to decency.Except... it doesn't go as planned. And Lance comes to learn much more about dragons than he'd ever dreamed.T for Strong Language & Graphic Depictions of Violence
Series: Come Fly With Me, Into A Fantasy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901545
Kudos: 15
Collections: AREA 69 WRITES SHIT





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of my (hopefully) two-part How To Train Your Dragon series!
> 
> Title is from [Sticks & Stones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8MWAPMeAt8) by Jonsi, the end credits song from the first HTTYD film.

It’s nearly impossible to get a good night’s sleep these days, and tonight is no different. Lance is yanked out of his peaceful slumber by a crash outside his house. A  _ familiar  _ crash.

Lance’s heart leaps into his throat and he scrambles out of bed. His blankets fall to the floor and try their damndest to trip him as he gets dressed. There’s another crash. Yelling. Lance makes his way to the window and pulls on latches that always get stuck. The shutters swing open.

_ Ah, yes, this is Altea. _

A deafening screech fills the air and Lance can’t help but feel frustrated. Terrified, sure- but also frustrated, because this is the third night this week he’s been yanked out of sleep.

All he wants is a decent night’s sleep.

Lance throws the shutters closed again, for once grateful that the latches stick. There’s another roar, more yelling- much closer now. Lance grabs his toolkit and takes the stairs two at a time. A very large something smacks into the far wall of the house and shakes dust from the beams.

Lance tucks his toolkit under his arm and picks up the axe his sister insists he carry with him at times like this. He wobbles with the weight of it, and it slips from his fingers, impaling itself in the floorboards. Lance doesn’t bother trying to yank it back out. He knows he won’t be able to.

Besides, what’s the point of carrying an axe if he can’t use it anyway?

The door is crooked on its hinges, which means it’s probably been thrown open and closed once already, and Lance has to pull hard to get it open, one corner digging lines into the floor.

The smell of smoke fills the room and Lance is suddenly staring into bright, golden eyes. Heat billows around him, searing skin where clothes don’t cover. The dragon roars and Lance shuts the door in its face, liquid fire bleeding through the gaps underneath.

_ Dragons. Of course. _

Lance prays the bent metal latch will hold, then heads for the back door, slowly inching it open to make sure there aren’t any other dragons lying in wait. There are none, but the air burns with the smell of hellfire and he can hear enough roars and screams to know they’re nearby.

When he rounds the corner onto the main square… well, it’s worse than the last two times.

The front of Lance’s house is ablaze, but he barely gives it a second glance. It’ll take more than one spray of hellfire to burn it down. Screams, both dragon and viking, fill the air.

Lance makes for the smithy. He dodges around a woman falling from the sky (and her axe after) only to stand up and charge right back into battle. He ducks under his two nearest neighbors, carrying huge logs to be used as barricades and wards. And despite his efforts to avoid notice, every person he passes shouts his name with varying degrees of annoyance.

Dust billows from one of the nearby houses and Lance looks up to watch the roof cave in, what looks like a Gruesome Fireface standing atop it and watching the chaos. Then someone throws their axe at it and the dragon roars, releasing even more burning hot smoke into the sky.

Lance gets knocked to the ground as people funnel away from destruction, and the master fisher leans over him with a growl before grinning from ear to ear with a hearty, “Good mornin’!”

The woman picks him up as if he were light as a twig and sets him back on his feet, then growls some more and disappears into the crowd. Lance cradles his now-dented toolkit in his arms and takes off once again, sliding down the mountainside and onto the main docks.

As he runs up toward the square he’s met with voices all around, shouting for him to go inside or hide in a boat or  _ just get out of the way _ . None of them want him involved in a dragon attack.

_ Typical. _

They’re all too busy to make good on their suggestions, though. It isn’t until Lance has the smithy in his sights and almost walks into hellfire that someone intervenes, yanking him off the path by the back of his shirt as molten lava pools into the dirt a few inches away.

Lance turns around and finds himself staring up at Chief Allura, who is very,  _ very _ displeased.

“What are you doing here? You should be inside!” She yells in his face.

Lance isn’t given much of a chance to answer. Matt Holt and a group of assorted warriors appear next to _Allura the Fierce_ and, thankfully, steal her attention away from scolding him.

“What have we got?” She asks Matt, not wasting even a moment.

“At least one Gruesome Fireface, a couple of Sparklers, several Thunderstones.”

“Any Night Furies?”

Lance holds his breath. Allura’s expression is tight, focused.

Matt shakes his head.

Allura’s frown loosens, just a little, and Lance decides to leave before she sees him still standing there. He sidesteps a woman wrestling a grumbling Thunderstone and ducks an axe swing from her husband battling another, then finally slumps his way through the back door of the smithy.

“There you are, my boy! I thought you’d been carried off!”

Lance turns to see Coran, the chief blacksmith, holding an axe over a bed of coals. The blade is bent and cracked down the middle, looking a lot like it’s been stepped on by dragon claws.

“Me? No way! I’m too  _ ripped _ for their tastes. I’d go right through their systems!” Lance says.

Coran laughs, a little too sarcastically. Lance hands over a couple blocks of stone from the water barrel as Coran pulls the axe from the hearth, watches him clamp them down on the blade. The bend straightens out and when the blocks are removed, the crack is long gone too.

Coran dumps the axe in water to cool the metal, then touches a tentative finger to the blade. When his skin doesn’t fall off the bone, he nods in satisfaction and tosses it back to its owner.

Lance peeks at the long line forming outside. “Hey uh, where’s Pidge?”

“She’s busy tonight! That Gruesome Fireface took out half their roof, so she and Colleen went to track it down for revenge! I’ll bet they’ve found it by now, those two!”

Lance doesn’t mention that he’d just watched said Gruesome Fireface destroying a different roof on the opposite side of the village, that they clearly must have found something better to fight - Lance doesn’t want to think about what would be better than a Gruesome Fireface - nor does he mention how unfair it is that Pidge gets to go out and fight dragons but he  _ doesn’t _ .

He tosses his toolkit onto the closest worktable and pulls on an apron, taking the next axe from Coran and stepping over to the sharpening wheel, sparks flying as metal hits stone.

Two more axes pass through his hands, and then something crashes right next door. Lance scrambles to the window. The house next to the smithy is on fire, flames dancing over the front, and as if on cue, Lance’s best friends in the whole wide world appear from the smoke.

Pidge’s hair is wild around her and singed black on the ends, glasses shining in the light of the blaze. Hunk is missing a sleeve and half his headband, and his boots are covered in soot.

Lance watches them throw buckets of water onto the house and silently wishes he could be out there helping. Then another fireball crashes into another house, and his friends are off again, the older vikings around them shouting directions as they all head back to the well for more water.

Coran calls Lance back to work and he groans. “They’re my friends! I should be helping them!”

“I’m sorry my boy, Allura’s given me strict orders to keep you here! You’ve never fought a dragon, you’d have no idea what you’re doing! You’d be at the mercy of the beasts out there!”

“But I don’t  _ have _ to know how to fight a dragon!” Lance says. “Not with the machine Pidge built!”

Lance grins and gestures wildly at his prize: a net catapult Pidge had built at his request. Coran watches with a dubious expression as Lance grabs the handles of catapult and rotates it to aim.

But, because nothing is  _ ever _ in Lance’s favor, he bumps the table next to him. The axe on top slips toward the ground, and he scrambles to catch it, his hip bumping the catapult and shooting a net through the window where it knocks a bystander to the ground in a mess of rope.

Coran gives him a sympathetic look and Lance goes back to sharpening without another word.

Lance listens to the familiar screams all around him and silently lists the dragons they belong to. an easy way to distract himself from the monotony of repairing axe after axe after axe. That low, grunting sound?  _ Thunderstone _ . The raspy shrieking?  _ Lightcutter. _ The booming roar that crackles like burning embers and rattles you down to the bone? The ever-deadly  _ Gruesome Fireface _ .

One of the head fisherman’s daughters - her face too covered in soot to tell which one - runs up to the smithy and informs everyone that the dragons are after the sheep.

Lance isn’t surprised in the slightest. The dragons are  _ always _ after the sheep.

The world outside grows a little brighter and Lance leans out the window as he hands an axe off to its owner. He sees Allura up on a torch tower nearby, silver hammer held before her, facing off a cloud of white-hot flames. She hits the cloud hard and it backs away, screeching.

But then another sound rises over the chaos, a shrill call that sends shivers down Lance’s spine. He recalls his sister’s bedtime stories- stories of a dragon no viking has ever seen.

A dragon that never steals, never shows itself, and  _ never misses its mark _ .

Allura screams out a warning and leaps from the tower, landing gracefully on the ground below. A streak of violet light hits the tower, destroying the torch and the base in one go. Shrapnel rains down on the townspeople. Fires start and spread from scattered pieces of the broken torch.

Lance sucks in a sharp breath. A  _ Night Fury. _

The few warriors still in line abandon their hopes of weapon repairs to help with what they have.

“Lance! I need to join the fight!” Coran yells, “And I need  _ you _ to  _ stay here _ .”

Coran waves his wooden hand at Lance threateningly, then trades the hook on the end with a curved blade. Lance watches him scoop a pile of newly-sharpened weapons into his arms and make an I’m-Watching-You gesture before finally heading out into the chaos.

Lance watches Coran until he’s invisible amid the crowds and smoke. Then he sighs, leaning on the windowsill with a frown. No one lines up for repairs. No one’s even  _ thinking _ about repairs.

Lance’s gaze drifts to Pidge’s catapult.

No one pays him any heed as he hauls the catapult across the square, for once too concerned with the battle to yell at him for existing. He dodges a fire here, a Thunderstone there, and makes for the outskirts of the village. No one notices him.  _ That’s a first, _ Lance thinks.

He stops at the cliff’s edge and sets about positioning the machine the way Pidge showed him. He stuffs the net into the barrel, grips the handles tight with both hands, scans the open sky.

The catapult swivels as Lance’s head snaps around, searching the sky for a shape to shoot. The sound of the waves crashing on rock below blends with the roaring and yelling and the crackle of fire behind him, and Lance forces himself to tune out the battle raging in the village.

That shrill, shrieking call echoes off the rocks, raising fresh bumps on Lance’s skin.

A ball of violet flame lights the sky like a shooting star and hits ground somewhere to Lance’s left, but he’s not watching the light. His eyes are on the sky- a starless blip in the night.

He aims. Shoots.

He hears the collision, and a distant scream- not the shrill call of Hellfire, but a sound of  _ surprise _ . The starless blip falls from the sky. The scream grows distant, mixing with the crack and crash of tree branches breaking beneath a heavy weight, and, finally, a near-inaudible  _ thud _ .

He hit the Night Fury.

_ He hit the Night Fury _ .

“I hit it. Oh my God. I hit it!” Lance yells, giddy beyond belief. “I hit a Night Fury! A  _ Night Fury _ ! Oh my God! Did  _ anyone _ see that?!” He throws his arms out in question.

Two massive clawed feet sink into the rocks on the clifftop, and up rises a tall, silver-scaled dragon. Flames are dancing in its open mouth, flickering in its slitted eyes, searing Lance’s skin.

Lance’s breath catches in his throat. This is  _ not _ what he’d meant when he’d asked that.

The Gruesome Fireface roars and Lance scrambles backward as the air itself boils. The dragon takes one step toward him and crushes Pidge’s catapult to pieces.

Lance can’t help it- he groans. Pidge is going to  _ kill _ him.

Then Lance realizes Pidge won’t actually get the chance if he doesn’t  _ fucking run _ .

He turns on his heel and books it back toward the village, the Gruesome Fireface shaking the Earth as it follows. He glances behind him just in time to dodge a ball of molten fire that melts a whole in the ground where he’d just been. His heart is beating a mile a minute.

Lance jumps at the first offer of shelter he sees- one of the still-standing torch towers. Of course, the Gruesome Fireface sees him hide. Lance feels heat billowing around him.

Up ahead, Chief Allura is running toward him, and even at a distance, he can tell she’s _ furious _ .

Suddenly, getting burnt to a crisp doesn’t sound so bad.

Which is a very real possibility, Lance realizes, because while he’s been mourning his imminent demise at Allura’s hands, the Gruesome Fireface has crept around the torch tower. It now looms over him, a dragon-shaped creature of white-hot fire and glittering, dagger-sharp teeth.

The flames are only inches from Lance’s face when a hammer smashes into its head. Allura’s strike knocks the dragon off balance and it takes a few hasty steps away from them both.

Lance has seen Allura fight a thousand times before, but he stills watches in awe of her strength.

The Gruesome Fireface turns on Allura as soon as it’s gained its footing. It opens its jaws and inhales, producing a truly awful sound. Lance recognizes the signs of oncoming Hellfire and throws his hands up - as if that would protect him - except… nothing happens.

A few tiny drops of what look like heated metal flick onto the ground, barely even leaving a mark.

Lance thinks it’s a little embarrassing that he was so terrified of this creature a minute ago.

“All worn out, are you?” Allura taunts. “It seems I have the advantage!”

If Lance didn’t know better, he’d think her words to be arrogance.

Allura whips out the staff she carries strapped to her back and lashes out with quick hits, slicing at the dragon’s thick scales and pushing it further away, until it takes to the air, crying in pain.

Allura wheels on Lance, and Lance really wishes he could be anywhere else. Preferably dead.

Death by dragon sounds  _ much  _ less embarrassing than death by his sister’s wrath.

Allura starts to speak but is cut off by a loud cracking sound. The base of the torch tower Lance had hidden behind is ablaze from top to bottom, and it splinters where the Gruesome Fireface had breathed Hellfire onto it. Lance watches as the tower crashes to the ground.

The torch top breaks off the tower base and hurtles across the square, Viking and dragon alike rushing to get out of the way. It finally comes to a stop in someone’s shed, but not before it rips through the nets they’d been using to protect the sheep from the dragons seeking them out.

Everyone watches in eerie silence as dragon after dragon scoops up a sheep and disappears.

Then everyone’s eyes are on Lance, their expressions full of scorn - because when do they look at him and feel anything else? - yet all Lance can think about is:  _ “But I hit a Night Fury!” _

Allura’s grabs Lance’s arm, her hand like an iron shackle, and drags him through the chaos back toward their house. The crowd parts before her like the sea before a God and everyone pretends to see nothing of her frustration with Lance, though he’s lived here long enough to know better.

The first rays of morning sun are peeking over the horizon and Lance starts to ramble about how last night was  _ his night _ , that no one was paying attention to him and he had a clear shot of the Night Fury and he just  _ had _ to go after it, and yeah, he actually shot it down, and they should probably send out a party to find it before it breaks loose and comes back for revenge-

“Lance,  _ stop, _ ” Allura interrupts, looking less frustrated and more just  _ tired _ . “Every time you come outside you break something or someone or just get in the way. I cannot waste time cleaning up after you anymore, winter is approaching and I have an entire village to feed.”

“I think the village could do with a little less feeding-” Lance mumbles sarcastically.

Allura turns around and grips his shoulders with both hands. “This is not a  _ game! _ Why must you go against every boundary I set? Why is it so difficult to follow simple instructions?!”

Lance forces a laugh to cover up the hurt in his heart, because he doesn’t want to tell her why.

“I don’t know!” He says with a shrug. Allura lets him go, one eyebrow raised. “Really! I just… I see a dragon and I just gotta…  _ kill it _ , y’know? It’s a… Viking… thing.”

“Oh, Lance,” Allura sighs. “You are many things, but a dragon killer is  _ not _ one of them. Please,  _ go home _ . I have matters I need to attend to and I  _ cannot _ have you making any more messes.”

She shakes her head as she walks away, instantly shouting orders to the small group of villagers waiting on something to do. She pauses to speak quietly with Matt, who has been following them at a respectful distance, then disappears, leaving Matt as Lance’s unwanted escort.

Because it’s  _ Matt _ , though, Lance takes the opportunity to vent about how unfair his sister is.

He prattles on as they hike the rest of the way up the hill, telling Matt a whole heap of things the guy probably already knew, until they finally get to the house and Lance has had enough of it all.

“It’s so unfair! She never listens to me, and even if she does, she looks at me like I’m the biggest disappointment of her life, like she asked the cook for extra beef and got a  _ fishbone _ instead!”

“You’re looking at it all the wrong way,” Matt says, and Lance can tell from his smile that he can’t be taken seriously. “It’s not about what you look like, it’s what’s _ inside _ that she can’t stand.”

Lance stares at him blankly. “Wow. Thank you for summing that up.”

“Look, what I mean is, you need to stop trying so hard to be something you’re not.”

Matt says this with a lot more sincerity than his first sentence, and Lance pauses on the stoop of his house to let the words sink in a little. Then Matt nudges his shoulder with a smile and heads for the square. Lance ignores his comment of “stay inside” and hightails it out the back door.


	2. Chapter 2

Candlelight illuminates the Great Hall, casting flickered shadows over the walls as the villagers shift anxiously and murmur among themselves. There’s a hole in the roof, a Thunderstone’s gift to them during the night’s raid, and the thinnest rays of morning light are peeking through it.

A long table sits in the center of the hall, and Chief Allura stands at its head.

She glances around the room at her people. Some are sporting small injuries, leaning against the table while someone else tends to them. Some are standing with confident stances, eager to hear what she has to say. Many just look tired. Allura can’t blame them. She’s exhausted, too.

She takes a deep breath and looks at the map laid across the table, her expression grim.

“If we find the nest, the dragons will no longer be a ready threat.” She says firmly. She knows the reaction she’ll get. “We must keep searching. One more journey, before the ice sets.”

As expected, murmurs of doubt trickle through the crowd. She knows the villagers are scared of that journey. Too many of them are still grieving those who left and never returned. Too many of them have been on one of those journeys and seen things they could not bear to repeat.

“Those ships never return. We cannot afford to lose more warriors.” Someone says. Allura finds the voice- it belongs to Sunny, one of the village cooks. “We cannot win against Hellheim’s Gate.”

Several other villagers hum in agreement and Allura frowns, trying not to let her frustration bleed through. She understands why her people don’t want to leave. But the number of dragons near Altea has been increasing with every raid, and they’ve already lost too many sheep this season. All it would take is one more raid and the Altean people are going to starve during winter.

But the fear of staying and starving is overshadowed by what lies beyond Hellheim’s Gate, the misty maze of rock where the dragons live. The nest is somewhere in that mist, and it has never been found, but Allura is _determined_ to succeed, no matter what terrors might stand in her way.

“You can win if I join you.” She says.

The room falls silent.

Allura has never joined a search for the dragon nest- it was always deemed too dangerous for their Chief to be gone so long. Not to mention the risk of losing their leader and greatest warrior.

But Allura knows she must go, because her people trust her. If she goes, they will follow.

No one says anything for a long moment. Allura can feel Matt staring her down, but she doesn’t look at him, instead looking out on the crowd, waiting for someone to speak up.

Colleen Holt is the first to step forward. Her face is tight, solemn, but there’s a fire in her eyes.

“I will go.” Colleen says, and Allura knows why. “I will go, and I will avenge my husband.”

And that’s all that needs to be said.

Colleen’s words stir everyone into action, and in her wake, warrior after warrior agrees to join the expedition until no one is left to protest. Allura smiles sadly, and adjourns the meeting. She holds her strong, confident, leaderly stance until everyone has left the room except for Matt.

“I want you to stay in Altea.” She says.

“No,” Matt replies immediately .

“Matt,” Allura stresses, the slightest hint of fear seeping into his name. “I can’t let you come. You need to be here to lead in case I don’t come back. We can’t afford to lose both our leaders.”

“We can’t afford to lose _anyone_ , Allura, most of all you. I’d rather die by your side than wait here and watch a messenger tell me someone _else_ I love died because I wasn’t there for them.”

Allura can hear the strain in Matt’s voice, and she can only guess how hard this is for him to say. He hasn’t talked about his father with her, but she knows how hard it hit him, because Matt was supposed to be on that journey, too. He’d been left behind because he’d broken an arm training.

Then the ship had returned, and Matt’s father, Colleen’s husband, hadn’t been on it.

“There’s no other option, Matt. I need you here. Hunk and Pidge will be starting dragon training as soon as we leave, and I need you to help Coran. You’re one of our strongest. Please, stay.”

Matt looks away, frustrated. Allura sinks into a chair and watches him with tired eyes.

Finally, he turns to face her again, his expression sad. “Okay, I’ll stay. On one condition.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Put Lance in dragon training.”

“Absolutely not.” Allura replies immediately.

“Yes! Think about it, Allura. Coran and I are going to be the only adults on the island capable of watching him, and we’ll both be busy with training. He’s old enough to start, both his friends will be starting. Allura, you can’t hide him away forever. You need to give him a chance.”

“Matt-” 

“No, I’m not backing down on this,” Matt interrupts, voice stern. “It’ll be good for him. And maybe, when you _return_ , he’ll finally feel like he can meet you on even ground.”

Allura knows Matt is right. Matt is _always_ right. She rubs at her eyes with a heavy sigh.

“I’m _scared_ for him, Matt. He’s not… he’s not like us. I’m afraid he’ll lose himself in our world.”

Matt rests a hand on her shoulder and when Allura moves her hands, his eyes are on hers, so soft and calm and loving. “You can’t always protect him, Allura.” He says, and she knows. “You can only prepare him. He’s going to go where you can’t follow- hell, he probably already _has!_ ”

  
  
  
  


Lance skids down a short slope and just barely manages to avoid falling at the bottom, his arms flailing to help regain balance. He looks around at the symmetrical lines of trees. The green and brown of the trees and underbrush fade into more green and brown as fear as the eye can see.

Lance has no idea how he’s supposed to find the dragon if he can’t tell what direction he’s going.

In any other circumstance, Lance would have gone to the cliff where he shot Pidge’s catapult and figured out where the dragon fell based on that, but the cliff was far too open, and the last thing he needed was to get into another fight with Allura over not doing what she’d asked.

So instead, he’d waltzed straight into the forest with nothing more than a badly-estimated guess of where the dragon could be. It’s been a while now, and his search hasn’t yielded any results.

Lance, annoyed and irritated and just generally pissed off, mumbles his frustration to no one.

“This is just great, isn’t it? Most people lose a sock, or a knife, but you? Oh _no_ , you have to go and lose a _dragon!_ And not just any dragon- a damn _Night Fury!_ This is pathetic!”

Without thinking too hard on the consequences, Lance smacks at a branch in front of him, which promptly swings back to smack him in the face. The hit knocks him flat on his ass and Lance is now furious with the misfortune of his entire life. He touches the gash on his face. It’s bleeding.

Great. _Just_ what he needed.

Lance glares at the tree as if it were the embodiment of everything that’s ever annoyed him in his entire life. Then he squints at the tree, and his frustration is immediately replaced with awe.

The tree is split perfectly down the middle, and half the trunk is bent over backward, curling so its splintered branches touch the ground- the very branches Lance had been suckerpunched by. Twigs and chunks of wood are scattered all around the bent tree, and without his chaotic brain distracting him from his surroundings, Lance notices a two-foot deep trench dug into the Earth.

Only an incredibly hard impact could dig a trench like that. Lance’s heartbeat quickens. He takes a deep breath. Walking ever so carefully, Lance follows the trench up a short cliff, and there it is.

The Night Fury.

 _His_ Night Fury.

Lance stands frozen in fear and shock, which is the worst thing to do when face-to-face with a dragon, but he quickly recognizes that it’s completely tangled in Pidge’s net.

The Night Fury is almost twice the size of a Thunderstone, even with its legs and wings pinned close to its body by the net. Its scales are a charcoal black, glittering in the morning sunlight, and as Lance changes his angle, he swears he sees a hint of deep red ringing each scale.

The dragon isn’t moving. There’s blood smeared on a tree nearby and soaking into the dirt.

“It’s dead.”

Lance’s innate terror at being so close to a dragon is instantly overridden by pure adrenaline, the kind that only comes from the greatest of achievements. He grins and huffs a laugh, disbelieving.

“Oh my God, it’s dead. I killed it. _I killed it_ . I killed a _Night Fury!_ Oh my _God!_ ” Lance lifts one foot and sets it on the dragon’s leg. “I have brought down this mighty beast!” He yells triumphantly.

And the dragon isn’t dead, because it yanks its leg out from beneath Lance’s foot.

Lance, _Viking_ that he is, shrieks and falls on his ass in the dirt, scrambling away from the dragon until his back hits the short cliff he’d come down from. His heart is hammering in his chest and he feels like he’s hyperventilating, because _holy shit,_ he could’ve _died,_ right then and there!

The dragon, apparently asleep instead of dead, is now perfectly still, staring straight at Lance.

Its eyes are violet, a color Lance has only seen in the Hellfire of a Night Fury, and Lance is struck with the realization that this dragon could reduce him to a pile of ash in a few brightly lit seconds. Lance stands on shaking legs and pulls his knife from his belt, inching closer to the dragon. 

The dragon’s eyes follow Lance’s every move and Lance _can’t_ look away. His hands shake and his legs feel like they might buckle at any moment, and he _can’t look away_.

The dragon’s eyes, so wide and bright and _innocent_ , feel like they’re piercing Lance’s _soul_.

And Lance can’t stop the doubt seeping into his thoughts, because this dragon, this creature… it’s _beautiful_ . Its scales are sparkling and its eyes are shining and it looks so _peaceful_.

But all dragons, _especially_ Night Furies, have proven themselves _deadly_ . How many times has the village struggled through a winter because dragons stole one too many sheep? How many boats have gone searching for the dragon’s nest and never returned? They _mus_ t be eliminated.

But then… this dragon never stole, did it? It never stole sheep, never attacked on its own. All it did was destroy a torch tower. A torch tower where Allura had been battling another dragon.

Wasn’t it just protecting its own kind?

A voice that bears a striking resemblance to his sister surfaces in Lance’s mind. How could he possibly let this chance pass him by? There’s a _Night Fury_ in front of him, completely vulnerable. Killing a Night Fury would be the ultimate honor. Allura would never doubt him again.

Those bright, burning eyes stare into Lance’s soul.

With a most dramatic display of sighs and groans and swears no one would be proud of, Lance finally puts one foot in front of the other and approaches the dragon with as much surety as he’s ever going to have. He shifts his grip on the knife and snaps through one of the ropes holding the dragon down. Then another. And another. For the first time today, his hands don’t shake.

As soon as the last rope is cut, Lance is thrown across the clearing. He hits the ground hard and gasps for air as the dragon looms over him, those violet eyes only a hair’s length away.

Lance can feel the dragon’s body heat and now he can’t breathe anyway, too terrified to even remember how. There is a Night Fury above him, completely untethered, and Lance _knows_ he’s going to die. It comes to mind how no one has _ever_ seen a Night Fury and lived to say so.

But the dragon doesn’t kill him.

It stares Lance down, eyes burning like Hellfire, for a long moment. Lance remembers how to breathe. Then the dragon huffs, breath hot on Lance’s skin, and backs off. It narrows its eyes at Lance, and when Lance’s moves to sit up, it takes an offensive stance and roars in his face. He can see its rows of sharp teeth, feel the heat of Hellfire in the air, and then the dragon is gone.

Lance stares at the ferns swaying in the dragon’s wake. His mind is blank, unable to process a single thing that’s happened. Even Allura’s voice in the back of his head is silent.

The dragon didn’t kill him, and he didn’t kill the dragon. Lance stands up and heads toward home.

When he walks into the house a half hour later, exhausted in every way possible, Allura is waiting for him. She’s sitting at the kitchen table in that rigid Mom Pose that says she’s pissed, and she looks pissed enough to suggest she’s been waiting a while. Lance takes a deep breath.

He says “I don’t want to fight dragons” at the same time Allura says “It’s time you learn to fight dragons,” which results in neither of them properly processing what the other has said.

Lance sighs and gestures for Allura to speak first.

She smiles softly for the first time in a long time, and Lance finds himself anticipating her words.“You shall have your wish: Dragon Training. You start tomorrow.” She says.

 _Oh no_ , Lance thinks.

There’s panic rising in Lance and he opens his mouth to protest, but Allura continues before he can say a thing, likely assuming he’s about to call her on a bluff or something of the sort.

“I know I don’t always listen to your side of things,” Allura says, and Lance kind of wants to point out that she isn’t listening to his side of things _right now_. “And I’m sorry for that. I want what’s best for you and I think I know what is, but perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps training will be good for you.”

_Right, because I totally didn’t just fail to kill a Night Fury when it was tied up right in front of me._

Lance doesn’t say this out loud, because he knows it’ll only cause chaos. Instead, he follows his sister as she stands and walks across the room, lifting a heavy silver axe from the wall.

She looks at the axe with a fondness Lance will never understand, because the axe belonged to her mother, who died when she was a child. Lance doesn’t know his mother. Allura found him as an infant, abandoned by his parents, and raised him as her little brother. Allura’s father had died not long before she found him.To Lance, Allura is a sister, mother, and father, three-in-one.

Sometimes Lance thinks that might be the reason why they can never get along.

“You will need this,” Allura says, holding the axe out to Lance.

As he takes the axe from her, Lance feels a weight settle in him, one much heavier than the axe in his hands. He forces down the lump in his throat and smiles at his sister. “Thanks, Allura.”

Allura smiles back and ruffles his hair, obviously pleased. “You are very welcome, Lance.”

Then she heads for the front door, pulling on her fur cape and picking up her own axe. She looks back at him with a strange sadness in her eyes and Lance’s stomach churns.

“Where are you going?” He asks. The shake in his voice betrays his nervousness.

“One last search for the dragon nest, before the ice sets and our boats are unable to sail. I have to join the expedition this time. It was the only way anyone would agree to go.”

That weight in Lance grows even heavier now, and he doesn’t bother hiding his worry. There’s a chance Allura might never return. A lot of Vikings have been lost in searches for the dragon nest. The last time a ship had sailed through Hellheim’s Gate, only two of the ten warriors came back.

Pidge’s dad had been on that ship, and he hadn’t come back. Lance still remembers how Pidge had locked herself away for weeks, how Matt had trained himself into sickness.

Lance doesn’t want to experience that.

Allura knows this. She smiles at him, and it’s a sad, strong smile. That smile gives Lance very conflicting feelings and he kind of hates it. He doesn’t want Allura to leave.

“Train hard, alright?” Allura says. Lance nods dumbly. “I’ll be back within three months. Probably.”

She looks away, that last word hanging in the air. Lance watches her leave.

“And I’ll be here.” Lance says to no one. “Maybe.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Welcome to Dragon Training!”

Coran’s voice echoes off the walls of the training dome, making him sound far more huge and intimidating than he really is. Lance trails behind Hunk and Pidge as they enter the dome.

Lance has seen the dome before, but he’s never set foot inside, and he takes the opportunity to take in his surroundings. The dome is really more of a pit, the “dome” being the metalwork high above the pit that keeps the dragons trapped inside from taking to the air and escaping.

Because  _ yes _ , the training dome is home to three very dangerous, very  _ angry _ captive dragons.

Lance’s gaze slides to where Coran and Matt are standing, their backs facing five huge wood and iron doors along the far wall. Lance can hear the low rumble of a Thunderstone behind one of the doors, can smell the burnt-skin scent of a Gruesome Fireface’s hellfire behind another.

Lance  _ really _ doesn’t want to be here.

“Whoa, Lance! I didn’t know you were doing training with us!”

Hunk’s voice rips Lance out of his misery, and he finds both his friends staring him down. Hunk is smiling, but it’s a soft, almost wary smile. Pidge is smirking like she knew all along.

“I thought Allura was gonna board up the house with you inside it until she got back.” She says.

“Yeah, well, here I am.” Lance says with a half-smile. “She had a… change of heart, I guess.”

“Pretty big change of heart, if you ask me.”

“Alright guys, you can celebrate Lance’s rise through the ranks  _ after _ training is over,” Matt calls them all to attention. “You three have a lot to prove and only a few months to prove it.”

Pidge snickers and steps toward the middle of the dome without hesitation. Hunk walks slower, sticking to Lance’s side. Lance can tell Hunk is worried about him. Hunk is always worried about him- as much so as Allura, though Hunk is far better at containing his worrisome nature.

Lance would be worried about his friends, too, if he didn’t know them as well as he does. Hunk, shy, kind-hearted Hunk, is an absolute  _ tank _ . He’s scared of everything and yet, somehow, scared of  _ nothing _ on the battlefield itself. Lance has seen him wrestle a  _ Thunderstone _ and almost win.

Pidge, too, is a born fighter- she’s stubborn and quick-footed and possibly the smartest person Lance has ever known. She never turns down a challenge, and nothing can stand in her way.

In essence, they’re both the polar opposite of Lance, who couldn’t fight a dragon if he tried.

He  _ did _ try. And then he chickened out and set the dragon free.

He still doesn’t regret the decision, though.

It takes Lance far too long to realize Coran and Matt have been talking, and he snaps back to the conversation at hand. They’re explaining the things dragon training will be teaching them, what the prize will be if they get through their training, and what the consequence will be if they don’t.

“Whichever of you has improved the most by the end of training will have the opportunity to kill a dragon in the ring, for all of Altea to see.” Coran announces, far too happily.

Lance really,  _ really _ doesn’t want to be here.

“Lance already killed a Night Fury, so is he like, disqualified or something?” Pidge asks.

“Hey, I never said I killed it!” Lance shoots back. “I just said I shot it down.”

“Yeah, and you destroyed the catapult I  _ painstakingly _ built you in the process.”

Lance frowns, his gut twisting with guilt. “I said I was sorry. It’s not  _ my _ fault a Gruesome Fireface decided to show up and crush it to pieces. And the thing almost  _ killed _ me, by the way!”

Pidge rolls her eyes, smirk now replaced with annoyance. Lance pouts, she scowls, and then Coran claps his hands. The sound echoes throughout the dome, easily grabbing their attention. He stretches his arms wide and gestures to the doors on the wall. Matt steps up to one of them.

“Behind each of these doors are but a few of the many species of dragon you will encounter, or perhaps already have. You will learn to fight each of them.” Coran says. “We have the Gruesome Fireface, the Deadly Mist, the Whiplash, the Terrible Terror, and last but certainly not least-”

Coran twirls to the side and presents the door Matt is standing next to. “The  _ Thunderstone! _ ”

Matt pulls a lever. The sound of the door mechanism rattling echoes at them from every angle.

“Um, aren’t you supposed to be teaching us first?” Hunk asks. His voice pitches higher the way it always does when he’s nervous. Or, in this case, downright  _ terrified _ .

Matt just grins. “We believe in teaching through experience.”

The door clanks open, a Thunderstone rages out, and all hell breaks loose.

Everyone takes off in different directions. Lance bolts for the gate, but it’s still locked tight, and none of the spaces are wide enough for even Pidge to squeeze through. Pidge heads for a tool rack off to the side. Hunk just runs in the direction opposite of where the Thunderstone is.

“Today is all about survival,” Matt shouts, the calm at the center of the storm. “If you get hit by one of those fireballs, you’re dead. So, what’s the first thing you’ll need?”

“Speed?” Lance suggests, pressing himself into the corner of the entrance.

“A medic?” Hunk squeaks from across the dome.

“A shield!” Pidge shouts, already holding the item in question.

Lance barely hears Matt’s announcement that Pidge was correct over the Thunderstone’s angry growling as it soars past him, apparently bent on chasing Hunk around the dome. Lance creeps out of his not-very-hidden hiding place and makes a beeline for the rack where the shields are.

He sees Hunk doing the same in his peripheral, and they reach the rack at the same time, each grabbing for a shield with an incredible sense of panic and urgency.

Because, you know, they could literally  _ die _ at any moment. No big deal.

Hunk turns on his heel and runs away from the rack. Lance moves to follow, but his shield slips from his fingers - why are they so damn  _ heavy?! _ \- and rolls away, bumping into Coran’s leg. He scoops up the shield and shoves it at Lance’s chest, leaving him with the brunt of its weight.

“Your most important piece of battle equipment is your shield! If you must choose between a sword and a shield, always go after the shield first!” He shouts.

Lance shamelessly scoots behind Coran and watches the chaos. The Thunderstone floats toward Hunk, pausing mid-air to cough out a two-foot-wide fireball at him. Hunk blocks the fireball with his shield, but the force of the hit knocks him to the ground, shield landing on his face.

“Hunk, you lose a point!” Matt shouts. Hunk grunts in annoyance.

“Shields are good for more than just protection,” Coran tells them. “Making lots of loud noise can distract a Thunderstone and throw off its aim, which just might save your skin!”

The trainees all start to bang their shields against something: Pidge with her mace, Hunk against a wall, and Lance against one of the cage doors, though he stops after two hits when the dragon inside starts hitting back. The Thunderstone grows visibly upset, shaking its head and snarling and wobbling in the air until it falls gracelessly to the stone floor of the training dome.

“Every dragon has a limited number of shots. How many does a Thunderstone have?” Matt yells.

Lance shoots off the first number that pops into his head, and his answer is incorrect. Pidge is distracted, going through the shields on the rack to find one that’s weighted better for her size.

Lance thinks she’s crazy, wasting time with something so dumb, but then, what does  _ he _ know?

Hunk, now standing sturdy across the ring, holds his shield in front of him and calls, “Six!”

“That’s correct! Two shots for each of you!” Coran replies.

All of the shields are more than half her size, so it’s no surprise when she finally loses her grasp on the one she’s settled for. As Pidge hurries to pick it back up, the Thunderstone sets its sights on the first thing it sees- Hunk. Or maybe it just _ really _ doesn’t like Hunk. Who knows.

Hunk stands strong and deflects the second fireball with his shield, but two head-on hits with a glowing lava rock has weakened it. They all watch the shield fly into a wall and splinter on impact.

“Hunk, two points down!” Matt calls. Hunk throws his hands up in surrender.

Lance is still half-hiding behind Coran, watching everything unfold. It’s a short-lived comfort. Matt grips his forearm and pulls him out from behind Coran, pushing him into the fray.

Lance glances back at Matt and Coran. They both frown and make firm gestures toward the ring.

_ ‘Get out there and fight!’ _ They seem to say.

Of course, Lance is a  _ horrible Viking _ , so he proceeds to attract the Thunderstone’s attention and then lead it straight toward Pidge, making them _ both _ its next targets.

Pidge dodges a fireball with a perfect roll that has Lance immensely jealous. The fireball hits the wall behind her and shoots sparks everywhere, forcing her toward where Lance is standing. He presses his back against hers and tries to sound like he’s smirking, despite being terrified.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, huh?” He says. His voice shakes.

“Nope!” Pidge shoots back, and he can  _ definitely _ hear her smirking. “Just you!”

Then she’s racing across the ring, leaving Lance stumbling in her absence. Lance barely dodges the fireball flying toward him. Sparks burn holes in his tunic and he pats his arm down in a panic to make sure it doesn’t catch fire. In this panic, he misjudges how far away the Thunderstone is, and he crashes head-first into it. His shield goes flying and so does his last shred of confidence.

Like some mirror image of his encounter with the Night Fury the day before, Lance finds himself pressed up against the wall of the training dome, his weapon (or, in this case, his protection) far out of reach. The Thunderstone looms over him, its golden eyes capturing his attention.

Lance can feel the air boil as the Thunderstone prepares its next shot, but Coran’s hook yanks it to the side at the last second, and the fireball hits the wall a few feet away. Lance instinctively closes his eyes against the sparks, and when he opens them again, the Thunderstone is on the far side of the ring, being manhandled into its cage by Coran and grumbling all the way.

“I need you three to understand something,” Matt says, once they’ve regrouped in the center of the ring. “ _ Never _ give a dragon an opening, because they will always,  _ always _ go for the kill.”

It isn’t until Lance is in bed, burns numbed and bandaged, that he thinks of the Night Fury again.

_ Why didn’t it go for the kill? _


	4. Chapter 4

As much as Coran would clearly  _ love _ to have dragon training be the utmost priority, there are still chores to be done around the village. Pidge whines and Hunk frowns, but they both have things to do, and as Coran says,  _ complaining doesn’t get things done _ , so they eventually slump off.

Lance, who isn’t allowed to be anywhere except in his house or at the smithy, doesn’t have any chores to do, so instead he packs up his drawing tools and heads into the forest.

There are thick grey clouds in the sky, and the breeze is cold on Lance’s cheeks, but it doesn’t smell like rain quite yet, so he throws caution to the wind and ventures further in. He watches a trio of crows harassing a hawk high above, watches them until they’re out of sight. Thin, balding branches sway in the breeze and Lance allows himself to calm down in the peace of the forest.

Without thinking, Lance finds himself standing once again staring up at a bent tree, standing in a two-foot trench. The image of the Night Fury staring into Lance’s soul flashes in his mind.

_ The dragon’s long gone by now. There’s no way it’d stay so close to the village.  _ Lance frowns.

Lance follows the trench to the cliff and tries to pretend his breath doesn’t catch. Directly below is where he’d thought his life was over. He can still see the dragon’s fading footprints in the dirt.

He can hear water coming from somewhere, and Lance tracks the sound to a small cave, the trickle of a stream and steady crash of a waterfall echoing off the cave walls. The cave is short- he can see all the way through to what looks like a clearing. When Lance steps inside to see, something on the ground catches his eye, and he bends down to pick it up.

The object is small,  _ tiny _ , even, and ebony black. It’s shaped like a teardrop and soft to the touch. Lance looks back down at the cave floor and finds several more scattered about, some sticking in patches of what Lance quickly realizes is dried blood. The hairs on his neck stand on end.

A dark shape shoots past the cave and Lance topples to the ground, startled. There’s the familiar enough sound of claws against stone, and the  _ very _ familiar grumbles of an angry dragon.

_ Oh God, it hasn’t left. _

Carefully, ever so carefully, Lance gets back on his feet and steps closer to the end of the cave, and he discovers that it doesn’t, in fact, lead to a clearing, but to a deep, deep chasm.

The waterfall Lance had heard earlier is not far from the mouth of the cave, flowing down into a wide but shallow-looking pool at the bottom of the chasm. A black shape stands out against the sand and Lance presses his back to the cave wall again,heart racing, breath heaving.

_ Oh God, why hasn’t it left? _

The cliff walls of the chasm are steep, almost-perfectly-straight kind of steep, and Lance can see the thick ring of trees and shrubbery that probably hides the chasm from view up above. It’s easy to see how a panicked dragon could fall in by mistake. But why hasn’t it just…  _ flown out? _

Lance peeks over the edge of the cave and watches his Night Fury.

The dragon is pacing down below, grumbling and shaking its head in clear annoyance. It takes a running start across the sand and leaps into the air, beating its wings in quick, powerful strokes.

It gets about twelve feet up, flapping almost desperately, before it finally loses its balance in the air and falls toward the ground, straightening at the last second to glide gracefully downward. It lands, growls in frustration, then takes a running leap at the cliffs surrounding the chasm. Lance watches the dragon try to get a grip on the wall, only to fail and glide back down to the ground.

The dragon doesn’t notice Lance, so Lance stays to watch.

After another few tries at flying out of the chasm, none of them successful, the dragon gives up with a huff and curls up by the edge of the pool. Lance quietly pulls out his sketchbook.

It’s been quite a while since Lance has had the time to practice his drawing, and he goes through several pages with unsatisfactory attempts at a Night Fury before he gets down an outline of the creature that doesn’t make him ashamed to call himself an artist. He draws out the spines on the dragon’s back, the downward curve of its neck. The charcoal smudges a bit and Lance frowns.

Lance sighs, twirling his pencil in one hand as he stares at the sketch. His lines are messy, but it looks very much like a dragon, so he can’t complain too much. Lance holds up his sketchbook against the silhouette of the napping dragon below him and finds that it… doesn’t match.

It takes him a few confused glances between the dragon and his drawing to recognize the flaw, before his eyes finally catch on the Night Fury’s tail, tucked close to its body.

Half of it is missing.

Lance has never seen a dragon with… tail flaps? Most of the dragons he’s seen have thick tails with spikes or hard, nubby ridges. Not tail flaps. But even though this is his first time seeing such a thing, there’s an itch at the back of Lance’s mind telling him it isn’t supposed to look like that.

Telling him that he injured the dragon far more than he thought he had, when he shot it down.

Lance sucks in a breath and looks at his drawing, at the dragon, at his drawing again. With the butt of his hand, he smears away half the tail on his sketch and more or less ruining the drawing.

He wonders what it means, his dragon missing half a tail.

He wonders why he keeps calling it  _ his _ dragon.

Lance sits and watches the Night Fury a little longer, watches it dip its foot into the water and lick at what Lance figures is probably a wound. After a few minutes, the dragon looks up to the sky with a strangely curious noise, then stands up and moves closer to the cliffside.

The slowly-dimming sunlight disappears altogether then, and the wind becomes a lot harder to ignore, so Lance decides it’s finally time to head home. He carefully climbs to his feet, shoving his sketchbook up underneath his shirt to protect it from the rain, hoping the threadbare tunic will be enough. Then he crouches to pick up his small pile of pencils from the cave floor.

But, because Lance is  _ cursed _ , he misjudges how close he is to the edge of the cave and almost teeters over the cliff, catching his balance but losing his pencils in the process.

He watches the pieces of wood and graphite topple town into the chasm, clicking off the stone of the cave floor and then the walls of the chasm and then a boulder at the bottom, as if the Gods require it to  _ only _ hit things that make sound echo throughout the chasm like distant thunder.

The Night Fury turns from its injured foot and once again stares straight into Lance’s soul.

_ Unlike _ the first time, Lance wastes no time in getting as far away from the dragon as possible.

It’s just started pouring when Lance makes it to the Great Hall, and he thanks the Gods for giving him enough time to get there without getting soaked. Only one of the tables is lit, and the only people still there are Matt, Coran, Hunk and Pidge, apparently discussing the training session.

Lance makes his way over to them and takes his usual seat next to Hunk, who is more or less ignoring the discussion in favor of savoring his food. Lance isn’t surprised in the slightest.

Coran passes Lance a serving of the stew they’re having and Lance starts to eat, trying to get his bearings on where the conversation is. Pidge seems to be criticizing her form.

“See, though, that’s what messed you up,” Matt interjects, earning a scowl from his sister. “You were spending too much time focused on your form and weapons, and it distracted you from the fight. Hunk’s mistake was staying in one place and making himself a target. And Lance?”

“Wasn’t engaged in the fight.” Pidge answers easily.

She raises an eyebrow at Lance, and he just shrugs, because she’s right, and they both know it.

“Correct. You three need to live and breathe this stuff, or you won’t survive a fight.” Matt says.

Coran, who had left at some point, returns to the table and drops a heavy book onto the table. It hits the wood with a crash, and everyone jerks away from the sound except Coran, who grins.

“This is the Dragon Manual! Everything you’ll ever need to know about every dragon we know of is in this book. It holds everything you’ll need to learn in order to understand dragon behavior.”

A crack of thunder shakes through the Great Hall, making the dimly lit room feel a lot more dark and ominous than it normally would be. Matt and Coran decide to take their leave, instructing the trainees to study so they can recite what they’ve learned during dragon training the next day.

Hunk and Pidge, however, have both read the manual already, and they’re both tired from a day full of chores that Lance didn’t have to worry about, so he’s left alone in the Great Hall.

Lance sighs into the empty room. He’s never had much interest in the Dragon Manual, because Allura had made it clear from the moment he showed his lack of Viking talent that he would never actually fight a dragon. Now, though, he realizes the Dragon Manual is  _ exactly _ what he wants.

He reads the first five pages in full, but as he continues through the book, he quickly recognizes the repetitive information. There are probably fifty dragons recorded, but every single one has the same warning at the end of its dedication:  _ “Extremely dangerous, kill on sight.” _ With so many dragons in the world, surely at least  _ one  _ species must be some variant of friendly?

Lance skims through page after page after page. He reads about dragons who burn their victims, bury their victims, choke their victims, turns their victims inside out. The warning read extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous- every single page reads the same.

Except for one.

Lance’s breath catches as he turns the last written page in the book, and the only page devoid of a picture. A line at the top reads  _ “Night Fury” _ and the bottom holds only three lines of data.

“Speed, unknown. Size, unknown. The true embodiment of death itself, an unholy creature of fire and lightning.” Lance reads aloud, barely above a whisper. “Never engage this dragon. Your only chance of survival is to hide and pray it does not find you…”

Lance pulls out his sketchbook and sets it over the dragon manual, his drawing of the dragon, the  _ Night Fury _ , rendering the information of the manual complete.

Lance feels faint.

_ What have I gotten myself into? _

**Author's Note:**

> I tried making a rule to myself that I'd only post fics once I have the whole thing finished, but then I got antsy (and more than a little desperate for recognition) so I'm just gonna post it as I write it! Of course, knowing me, that means the posting schedule will... well, there won't be one. If you wanna keep up with the fic, I'd just subscribe so you get emails, because there might be months at a time between chapters. 
> 
> #SorryNotSorry
> 
> Kudos to [Gemma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose), who I'm not really friends with anymore, but who helped with a good deal of the worldbuilding in this particular AU! They also came up with the Gruesome Fireface as a dragon, though their original creation was much more unique than what I went with in the end.
> 
> This AU is gonna be a little... weird? Not that y'all would know from the first chapters. But expect some surprises. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


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